I'm a One-Percenter...and I Support the OWS Movement.

Originally posted by Twilly
You are forgetting 1 important point. The Government made all of your money for you.

In the late 90's, your tech company did well because of the tech boom, that was created by government regulations. And the real estate boom was
directly caused by Big Willie and the Dems in Congress. Barney Frank in particular, passed a law forcing the banks to give loans to people who they
KNEW couldn't pay it back. That caused a shortage of real estate, which caused prices to sky-rocket... Making you alot of money. If the Government
had kept their hands out of both issues, There would have been no bubbles, and the free market would still be doing its thing. Please dont tell me
Capitalism does not work... It works great when left alone.

The bottom line of capitalism is Risk and Reward. If I only have $100, and I risk it, chances are I will receive a reward. Those who refuse to risk
anything, will get no reward.

your wrong about the tech boom it wasn't due to govt regulations...although i am sure it helped. the tech boom was due to innovation and the further
development of the personal computer in the internet world that had just opened. remember it was called the dot com bubble. the tech boom is still
going...is it iphone 4 now?

My good sir I respect you for what you have said. Although I doubt you are what we consider the1%. Unless you make muti-billions a year, your just a
small fish like us. As George Carlin said " it's a big club and you and I ain't in it."

if you feel so strongly for the 99 than why dont you hire the landscaper and pay him well?who knows he might be able to pay for his daughter's
surgery or give the babysitter more money or be able to lend friends and family money.but you dont because you do what every rich person does and has
an attack of conscience and does nothing about it.if you are so disgusted with what your company does why not work for a company that believes in not
outsourcing jobs.i could go on but really you should be doing something to HELP our country and set a good
example.either way you and i both know it is over for america unless......

All I know is that you are not the 1% these kind of people get breed in families.... just because you made money doesn't mean they will let u in
their darkest lair. sry I didn't have enough patience to read your whole post

Well yea, 100k is not gonna be enough to buy a property out right, but that 100k turns into 500k or more with a loan from a bank. If you can get one
that is, lol. Working on the credit score as we speak.

And I think like 70% of restaurants fail within the first year. Some people say it's as high as 90-95%, but apparently that's a myth. 70% is still
crazy high though. Not saying it can't be done, just saying the figures don't seem to be on your side, even if everyone does like chicken wings. You
need to sell quite a few chicken wings to pay the rent, the electric, and the wages of your employees.

You don’t need a bank to buy real estate. I’ve never gone to bank to get a loan on an investment property. All you need is a motivated seller to
find a great deal, and there are plenty of them at this moment. It’s not uncommon to get owner financing when dealing with commercial properties.
You need to learn how to leverage your money, and always buy at a steep discount. I never buy at more than 65% - minus repairs. You always want to buy
with built in equity. Also, never buy on potential, only pay for what the property is making now. Also, don’t get too caught up in things like CAP
rates, GRM (gross rent multipliers). I use the 50% rule when evaluating acquisitions, but I don’t know if it’s applicable in your buying area.
Good luck, make sure to educate yourself before jumping in.

so are you married?, just curious, not that I'm an interested female, I mean Im a girl in all, and Im just well you know curious if ya got yourself a
girlfriend for research purposes only that is, yeah that's it, research, I'm just doing a poll on the relationship status of the top 1 percent,
um....lol Im kidding

I am quite certain that there are several of us here that fit firmly into the "1%" or even the ".5%". If we have the same goals of decent
humanity, then I fail to see why others here feel the need to attack us for not being poor. Some people here need to really look at WHY they are
angry. Are you angry because you truly care about others and the condition of humanity? Or, are you angry simply because you are not in the 1%? I feel
safe is saying that a great deal of you would fall into the latter............

You are not the problem, and the amount of money you make should not have any value in your opinion / contribution. The people saying you should do
things such as pay the weeder across the street 10k a day is rubbish as a solution - although, would make someones life. This problem is with
criminals who are not prosecuted, and private bankers tweaking the knobs. As someone with bearly enough money to get by, I say arrest the criminals,
block the fed, and cut military spending.

Too many people with the OWS focus instead on how much money someone brings home, and not how they are actually getting the money. This will
accomplish nothing besides a (somehow) larger disconnect between the wealthy and the poor. All your other points I agree with fully, thank you for
posting this thread.

I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to comment and discuss. I had no idea this topic was going to get so much attention; I'm blown away,
thanks so much.

I guess there is a lot more I could say but I don't really have time to address every point. I'll touch on a very few things and maybe come back
later if I have the time. First of all. I got a lot of interesting U2Us as well as responses in this thread. I guess I should have expected people
would ask for something, be it information or "something else." But the answer is no, for reasons that should be logical to most of you. Ahd all of
you should know its not a good idea to ask for anything or give anything to complete strangers over the internet. Don't take candy from strangers. Be
that as it may, I wish everyone good luck.

I do give money to various causes...and I have given money to two different OWS groups. I like to both give money and invest money in my local area. I
encourage everyone to support their local area, in what ever way they can, rich or poor or otherwise. That's a great way to combat the virus of
"globalism" (outsourcing/offshoring) that is rotting the US industrial sector like leprosy.

An interesting thing - I got a lot of criticism from the "left" that I wasn't expecting and hadn't really thought about. My own bais is showing in
that I'm used to defending my position to skeptical conservatives; I guess as a conservative myself, interacting with the "hard left" is just a
clash of worldviews and we really aren't going to agree on a whole lot. That's a battle I'll let others fight if they want; its too vast a gulf to
be really all that interesting to me, personally. But left or right, I hope we can all -- or almost all -- agree that the financial system is corrupt
and needs a total overhaul. Mobs of angry people is as good a way as any to force the sociopaths in the finance world to take things a little more
seriously. Believe it or not, I think its got a lot of people rattled.

I'd also like to ask anyone who is not in finance but considers themselves a good businessman -- sales guys, real estate, tech, manufacturing, small
business owners -- How long are you going to put up with these D-bags on Wall Street eating your lunch? They are taxing you to hell and back, giving
themselves bonuses with it, and then turning around and convincing you to put your cash in a stock market where they can rip you off again! These guys
are picking your pockets...What happend to all the non-finance businessmen that used to be the backbone of the US economy??

What else...This thing is still taking shape and some aspects are now starting to disturb me a little...developments in the last few days, even. There
is an undercurrent of really ugly feeling now, a sense that the gloves might be coming off soon. If the movement goes violent or chaotic, I'm
probably going to have to temper my enthusiasm or even drop support. As noted in the original post, I maintain skepticism.

One person asked whether I'd support a debt reset. One of the ideas I've been playing around with is the idea of forgiving some debt PLUS giving
people who have non-negative net worths additional cash. Example: Compare a person with student debt of 100K vs. a small businessman with 200K assets.
Assuming a closed system for argument's sake, the student debt is wiped out, and the businessman also gets a gift of 100K, giving him a new net worth
of 300K. The student is back to zero, but at least he's not in debt, and can begin to perhaps build wealth rather than trying to dig out of an
endless hole and shoveling money to banking gangsters. It's not a perfect idea, I'm sure some of you smart people can find holes in it. For one, it
inflates the money supply a bit...but I would argue that it couldn't possibly be worse than the insane credit creation the Fed is engaged in today.
Think on it...

You are so right! I though not at the 1% level am in great shape. With no luck but just hard work and HUGE SAVING ABILITY (we never "Buy before we
save for it", and ALWAYS LIVING FAR BELOW MEANS, over time we have much in assets.

Taught well by parents and in turn taught kids well too. Kids have always saved at least 50% of their income. Wife and I save at an average 70% of our
income. Heck, saved 1/2 many years ago when first married, having baby with no healthcare to pay for anything and then making only $10,000 per year
gross. ------

Foreigners know this and do this. Heck many come here and make less than mimimum wage yet within 10 years have began their own mini empire as I call
it ----- They SAVE, INVEST and LIVE BELOW MEANS. ----No secrets, no magic, just common sense and caring about their future and their children;s
future.

We AMERICANS deserve what we have gotten ourselves into ---- and I beleive the results will be complete breakdown and collapse if not today within a
few years.

I wrote of Mad Max World over 16 years ago coming and we have it and worse --------

As far as Occupy moevement, It is about time. I write, teach,preach, live that all our leaders and those in control are nothing more than TAKERS ---
lie, cheat, steal, backroom deals, and scheming to jump over all others, taking the quick route to power and money and fame. and by doing this, their
real knowledge (or caring for anything, maybe even them self really --- but that is another of my sociological writings) is little to none. TAKERS
MUST BE WIPED OUT & a Total "RESET of MANKIND" is the only solution. ---- You can't cut out most of a cancer and expect to "be cured of cancer".
All the cancer and anything that resembles it must be destroyed. It won't be painless, nor pretty, but as all surgeries, it must be done! --- the
sooner , the better!

For the record, I don't believe any of the previous socio-economic systems (capitalism, socialism, communism or fascism) is the answer to our
fundamental economic problems. IMO those systems have worn out their welcome. Those systems were designed hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago and
it's time for a new design. We have exponentially more scientific and technical knowledge now then we did even just 200 years ago, but yet we are
still using a blueprint that represents extremely old values based on a very limited scientific perspective.There is no way our founding fathers could
have predicted what a healthy society would need today.

That being said, I appreciate the honesty you have given about being in the right place at the right time. However, you didn't address the issue with
the rich, spoiled kids thriving off of daddy's money.

There is less social mobility in America than anywhere else in the world. It seems that it's less about being in the right place at the right time as
it is about being in the right WOMB. What environment you are born into has more to do with where you end up on the social totem pole than anything
else.

Being a Ron Paul supporter I would imagine that you believe we need more capitalism and less regulation, but aren't all of these problems just
manifestations inherent in capitalism. If one has money to begin with, they don't need to work, their money works for them which gains them even more
money to work for them to gain even more money to infinity. And all of their money comes from everyone else being in more and more perpetual debt,

Everything is for sale including the government. You touched on corporate welfare. The reason corporate welfare exists is because the government is
OWNED by the very corporations it supports.

Hard works aside, capitalism will always favor those with money over those who create. What one creates is less important than what one owns because
even creation is bought by the ones that have capital to begin with.

IMO, more and more capitalism, like what we've continued to get since Regan took office, is just going to expose more and more of its intrinsic
flaws, which will lead to less progress, a bigger gap between the rich and poor and less social mobility.

One person asked whether I'd support a debt reset. One of the ideas I've been playing around with is the idea of forgiving some debt PLUS
giving people who have non-negative net worths additional cash.

Yeah, that was I.

Thanks for addressing the idea. Have a look at my other posts and threads to see more of how my worldview has evolved.

Oh I gotcha completely. I'm dating myself here but...
When I had my first child ''Pampers'' type diapers didn't exist. We had the old cloth / picked up and delivered /pinned on and then plastic pants
put on over.

So I 'designed' the first "Pampers" type tape on diapers. I thought about it because we used to take absorbent wound pads and put medication on
them then plastic film and tape them with duct tape to a horses hoof to draw out abcesses.

So about 4 years later - PAMPERS was born. But not by me because I didn't have the resources in money or people around me to act on it.

Also - my great uncle had a pharmacy in small town southern Ohio. He used to make this pink liquid for upset bellies to sell to people in town and he
called it PB or Pink Bismuth. One of his original bottles is in the family still.
One day this pharmaceutical sales guy for a big company asked for a sample of the PB.
Next thing you know 'Pepto Bismol' is selling like hotcakes on the national market.
Friends and family encouraged him to sue but he was just a nice guy and getting a bit older. He said they would drag it out till he was dead and he
didn't want to live his last years in court.

Excuse me? you say "Americans deserve what they have gotten themselves into?"

So you are saying that millions of Americans just went completely bonkers-out-of-their-minds over a period of about 3-4 years, all of them..
all at once, and they overextended themselves to the MAX like a million raving lunatics, destroying themselves and the United States Economy.
Oh and all those millions of European people did the SAME THING over the SAME period of time, crashing the European economy!

Miraculous!

Or maybe it could be that the top tier international banking institutions took advantage of relaxed regulations, defrauding the US and European
markets and investors and crashed the system - just as they had done in 1929?

Oh yes - then those thousands of OWS people who are now protesting just up and decided one day, out of the blue, that they were jealous of the
banker set!? wow.

Just thought I would throw that one in for ya as that seems to be the secondary talking point on this issue.

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